CLIL Science: Nature Diary

Making a nature diary is exciting and rewarding and my daughter can learn a lot about the common plants in our area. She can connect more closely with them through observing and working with them, and helps her to understand and remember the plants in a way that is never possible from just reading about them in a book.

We usually keep a notebook in our bag for pressing plants. No matter where we go there is always an opportunity to find something new or pretty to press.

After emptying out our findings to our garden table, we put them into our press. We leave the plants here until they completely dry (for about one or two weeks).

Once dry, we stick one sample of each plant into another notebook. We write the plant's name in Hungarian, English, and Serbian and add the year, season and the month of harvest. Therefore, it is a valuable resource for language learning, too. We learn the names and parts of the plants, the seasons and months, the names and flags of the countries, and the names of the languages, too. It is also a great tool for learning reading and writing.

The rest of the dried flowers and plants will be used to make greeting cards, pictures, and other crafts.